Meeting notes to actions

Meeting notes to actions

Meetings end with "we should" and no owner. This kit turns notes into a short list where every item has one named owner, a date, and a clear finish line, and it writes a CSV you can paste into a spreadsheet or tracker.

Inputs

1. The notes or transcript. Pasted, or a file. Save pasted text to notes/<meeting-slug>-<date>.md so the CSV can point back to source lines.
2. The meeting date. Needed to turn "by Friday" into a date. Use the date in the notes; otherwise ask.
3. Attendees and roles, if not in the notes. Owners should be roles or names the team uses, never a group like "Eng" or "everyone".

Steps

1. Read the whole thing first. Separate three kinds of lines:

   • Decisions: something was agreed. Write it as a sentence in past tense.
   • Action items: someone has to do something after the meeting.
   • Open questions: raised but not settled. These usually need an action item too ("Head of Finance: bring a recommendation on X").

2. Rewrite each action item into the standard line, keeping the speaker's intent:

   - [ ] Owner: verb-first task with a clear finish line (due 2026-11-07)

   • One owner per item. If two people were named, pick the one who will drive it and add the other as "with Head of X" in the text.
   • Verb first, done is visible: "Send the revised hiring budget to the ELT", not "Hiring budget".
   • Real dates. Convert "next week" and "after the offsite" into dates. If no date was said, leave it blank; the script will flag it.

3. Save the cleaned list under ## Action items in the notes file, then build the CSV:

   node scripts/actions-to-csv.mjs notes/weekly-ops-2026-11-04.md out/actions.csv --meeting-date 2026-11-04

   The script reads - [ ] checkboxes and lines starting with Action:, TODO:, AI:, Next step:, or Follow-up:. It finds owners written as Owner:, @Owner, Owner to ..., or (owner: Name), and resolves by Friday, tomorrow, end of week, end of month, next week, and ISO dates. Columns: id,owner,action,due,status,meeting,meeting_date,source_line,due_note.

4. Fix the gaps it reports. For each UNASSIGNED owner or open item with no due date, propose one and ask the user to confirm. Rerun until both counts are zero, or the user says to leave them.
5. Write the follow-up (format below) and show it. Offer a version for chat and one for email. The user sends it.

Output format

# <Meeting name>: <date>

**Decisions**
- Hold the second sales req until December bookings are in.

**Action items**
| # | Owner | Action | Due |
| - | ----- | ------ | --- |
| 1 | Head of Finance | Send the revised Q4 hiring budget | Fri 2026-11-07 |

**Open questions**
- Do we renew the analytics tool? (Head of Finance brings a recommendation, due 2026-11-12)

Next meeting: <date>. Reply here if an owner or date is wrong.

Guardrails

• Never assign an owner the notes do not support. When unsure, mark it UNASSIGNED and ask.
• Do not record side comments about people's performance, health, or pay. Leave them out of the summary and mention to the user that you left something sensitive out.
• Keep quotes short and only when the wording matters for a decision.
• The CSV and the summary are drafts. The user decides where they go.

Meeting notes to actions

Turns meeting notes or a transcript into decisions and action items, each with one owner and a real due date. It also writes a CSV you can paste into a spreadsheet or task tracker.

Who it is for

Anyone who runs recurring meetings: COOs, founders, chiefs of staff, team leads. Especially useful when notes are messy and "we should" never turns into "who and when".

Example

Input (examples/weekly-ops-notes.md, shortened):

Date: 2026-11-04 (Wednesday)

- [ ] Head of Finance: send the revised Q4 hiring budget (due 2026-11-07)
- [ ] @EngManager propose a new on-call rotation by Friday
- [ ] Head of People to draft the backfill job description by next Tuesday
- [ ] Review the analytics tool renewal and usage

Output (out/actions.csv):

id,owner,action,due,status,meeting,meeting_date,source_line,due_note
1,Head of Finance,Send the revised Q4 hiring budget,2026-11-07,open,Weekly ops sync,2026-11-04,18,
2,EngManager,Propose a new on-call rotation,2026-11-06,open,Weekly ops sync,2026-11-04,19,
3,Head of People,Draft the backfill job description,2026-11-10,open,Weekly ops sync,2026-11-04,20,
4,UNASSIGNED,Review the analytics tool renewal and usage,,open,Weekly ops sync,2026-11-04,21,

Claude then asks who owns item 4 and when it is due, and drafts a follow-up message with decisions, actions, and open questions.

What it can access

• Reads notes in notes/ (and the sample in examples/).
• Writes cleaned notes to notes/ and the CSV to out/.
• Runs one script, scripts/actions-to-csv.mjs, which uses only Node built-ins.
• No network, no API keys. It never sends the follow-up for you.

Setup

None. Try it on the sample:

node scripts/actions-to-csv.mjs examples/weekly-ops-notes.md out/actions.csv